


Smoke and Silence

by appeuro



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prostitution, Angst, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-04
Packaged: 2018-05-31 06:30:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6459556
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/appeuro/pseuds/appeuro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jongin watched Kyungsoo take a drag from his cigarette, and through the haze, he was sure he saw Kyungsoo clearly for the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smoke and Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Daughter; Smoke

Jongin stretched his legs wide on the velvet couch, worn and stained from nefarious use. The room was encased in a dim light that illuminated the red walls adorned with tacky gold borders and various gaudy paintings of plump nude maidens. No one ever used this room. He couldn’t blame them.

Closing his eyes as his head hit the stiff arm rest, Jongin inhaled the thick, white smoke swirling above his head. It filled his lungs, burning only a little. It was a small price to pay for a soothing balm over his frayed nerves. it never crossed his mind how cigarettes caused lung cancer, heart disease, or whatever else his old crinkled eyed, wire rim wearing health teacher tried to shove down his throat. Nothing was worse than what he did to himself every day. Everyone dies anyway.

Jongin had almost succumbed to the part in his mind that was numb, that place in the back of his brain that offered nothing but blackness and solitude, the only place left that was still his, when he heard a small click.

There went his three minutes of peace.

He moved to sit up, grunting as his back and the sunken, sad, material protested against the sudden movement, but he stilled when he heard a quiet, flat voice cut through the haze in the room.

“It’s just me.”

Jongin knew who me was. Me had been there longer than anyone else. Me was Kyungsoo or, as he liked to be called at work, D.O.

Kyungsoo was the first person Jongin had met there. He remembered the shiny black hair and pale white skin. The tiny frame with impossibly large, round eyes. Jongin had been running the streets since he was 18, until one night in the back of a red Camaro, one of his clients Junmyeon invited him to come work at his “club”. He said yes because winter was coming, and it was a bitch trying to find work and stay warm, but he almost walked out the back door when Junmyeon introduced Kyungsoo to him as his “mentor”. Jongin scoffed in his face. What could Kyungsoo teach him that he didn’t already know.

Jongin gave Kyungsoo Hell too. He made sure of it. He stole Kyungsoo’s clients, didn’t use protection, fucked anyone and everyone, until one day, in the middle of this very room, Kyungsoo found him beat up, abandoned, and drugged. When Jongin came to in a bath of warm water, he was ready for the “I told you so”, but it never came. Kyungsoo had stayed beside Jongin with warm, wet towels and a soothing singing voice, until Jongin shoved Kyungsoo’s warm hands off of him, too embarrassed to be grateful.

Jongin thought he would come to hate Kyungsoo even more after being seen in such a vulnerable state, but neither spoke of that day ever again, and Kyungsoo never asked for anything in return or treated Jongin any different. After the incident, they didn’t grow apart nor get any closer. They co-existed, working in tandem, fluttering around each other without stepping on each other’s toes, and four years later, they became the two best prostitutes in the club, making more money than they ever could out on the street or without one another.

Jongin watched Kyungsoo through hooded eyes. Kyungsoo hadn’t changed a bit in the four years jongin knew him. He still had that boyish figure and that milk white skin clients drooled over.

“There’s a new client I think you’ll like. Pays a lot. I’m not his type. I’ll give you his contact info later.”

Jongin nodded, grunting his reply as a puff of smoke escaped his lips. That’s all they ever talked about when they crossed paths. That’s all his life consisted of really. Sex and money.

Jongin watched Kyungsoo peel off his shirt, and then his jeans. And that’s when Jongin’s eyes went wide.

Milky white thighs, even in dim light, showed puffy lashes, old, cruelly healed, littered up and down his skin. Jongin was left breathless, the smoke trapped in his lungs stale and suffocating.

He never… How…

“You’re staring.”

Jongin turned his head, pretending he hadn’t seen, and hid behind the cloud in front of his face, his lungs finally releasing the smoke burning in his lungs. Kyungsoo didn’t seem like the type to let someone do that to him.

“It was his way of devaluing me, making me his.”

Jongin felt sick to his empty stomach. He didn’t know who his was, but he had an idea.

Jongin hated this. Hated when reality defeated fantasy. He wanted to believe things weren’t as bad, weren’t as sad, as they really were. Money only got you so far though.

Jongin didn’t look up again until Kyungsoo appeared in front of him, shower fresh, legs covered, hair wet. And for once, Jongin wished there wasn’t so much smoke in the room. He wished there was a window, some light. He had only ever seen Kyungsoo in dark places and artificially lit spaces.

“Can I have one?”

Jongin looked at the smoldering bud between his fingers before nodding, putting his own out in the ashtray beside the couch.

Jongin handed the cigarette to Kyungsoo before taking another one out for himself. He lit his own before handing his lighter over.

Jongin shifted letting Kyungsoo sink down beside him with nothing but silence and smoke between them.

Jongin had about five minutes before his next client. The one who liked to pull his hair and bite angry words into his skin.

Before he could get up though, Jongin felt another hand on his. He flinched, not used to the soft, unexpected touch, but turning his head, nicotine heavy on his tongue, he looked toward Kyungsoo who had an air of seriousness on his face.

“Let’s go.”

Jongin’s brows furrowed, his lit cigarette faltering between his slim fingers. Nothing ever surprised him anymore. But this did.

“Where?”

Jongin jumped at the sound of his own voice. Rough, hazy.

“Anywhere,” Kyungsoo replied, seriousness replaced with a silent pleading.

It was a look that Jongin recognized. A look of defeat. Kyungsoo was waving his white flag. It made sense to Jongin now as to why Kyungsoo would ever let him see his scars. It was on purpose. To show Jongin that he was once hurt, betrayed, too. They were even now.

“I can’t. I have a client in a few minutes,” Jongin replied, brushing off the look in Kyungsoo’s eyes.

Though he pictured himself getting up to move and removing Kyungsoo’s warm, soft hand from his own, Jongin remained sitting. His cigarette hot, dying.

“Right,” Kyungsoo replied, his face turning away from Jongin, once again stony and hard. Guns drawn again.

With almond shaped eyes and a lost for words, Jongin watched Kyungsoo take a drag from his cigarette, and through the haze, Jongin was sure he saw Kyungsoo clearly for the first time.

He noticed the sag in his narrow shoulders, the downturn in his plump lips, the sadness, or loneliness, that slept in the corner of his eyes. He could see the circles under his boyish eyes now that there wasn’t a layer of makeup to tuck them in, and a bruise was purpling right where the neckline of his shirt stopped. For the first time, Jongin understood that urge he had to take care of Kyungsoo even though Kyungsoo had always taken care of him.

He didn’t deserve to rot away in a place like this, Jongin thought. He wasn’t sure if he was talking about himself or Kyungsoo.

“Let’s go.”

Jongin couldn’t believe the words that came out of his mouth. Jongin never once thought about leaving. Not even when he was left strung out, bloody, splayed on the carpeted floor. Where could he go? He didn’t have an education, a family, a home. Where could they possibly fucking go?

But he owed Kyungsoo one. Kyungsoo saved him before. Maybe it was his turn now.

Kyungsoo turned his head toward Jongin, and all the innocence that he hid away so long ago came to surface in the way the side of his mouth turned up and eyes turned into crescent moons, amused.

“Really?”

“Yeah, really,” Jongin replied, his own smile budding. “But let me finish this cigarette first.”

Kyungsoo chuckled as he too sat back against the abused couch, both bringing hot white sticks to chapped lips, to exhale inhaled smoke.

And all Jongin could see was white and their hands still intertwined between them.


End file.
